Lynchburg-Clay FFA’s Matthew Gossett makes history with 2023 National Agricultural Proficiency Award

Years of hard work paid off earlier this month —  and local history was made in the process — when Lynchburg-Clay graduate Matthew Gossett heard his name called as a national Agricultural Proficiency Winner during the 2023 National FFA Convention.

Gossett is a 2023 graduate of Lynchburg-Clay High School, where he was a member of the FFA chapter for four years. During the Friday, Nov. 3 session of the National FFA Convention, Gossett was selected as the country’s winner of the Fiber and Oil Crop Production Agricultural Proficiency Award. Lynchburg-Clay FFA adviser Dara Landess said that they believe that Gossett is both the first Lynchburg-Clay FFA member and first Highland County FFA member to receive a national proficiency award.

According to the National FFA Convention, “Agricultural Proficiency Awards honor FFA members who, through supervised agricultural experiences (SAEs), have developed specialized skills that they can apply toward their future careers. Students compete in areas ranging from agricultural communications to wildlife management. Proficiency awards are also recognized at local and state levels and provide recognition to members exploring and becoming established in agricultural career pathways.”

Getting to this point has been a multiyear journey, as Gossett joined the Lynchburg-Clay FFA chapter his freshman year of high school. Gossett participated in regular activities such as the annual fruit sale fundraiser and was eventually elected vice president, and later president, of the chapter. He also competed in several FFA contests, including soil judging, tractor troubleshooting and job interview contest, while he was also an active 4-H member and showed lambs at the Highland County Fair.

But another FFA activity, Gossett’s SAE, is what qualified him for his national award. SAEs are required for all active FFA members. According to Ohio FFA (ohioffa.org), an SAE “is a student-led, instructor-supervised work-based experience that can teach FFA members about how to prepare for the future.” An SAE is “to be related to those industries served by agricultural education. Those industries include agriculture, horticulture and natural resources. It should complement the student’s occupational interests. It should include technical, academic and employability skills.”

That’s exactly what Gossett did, as he picked an area he was both familiar with and interested in — farming soybeans, as he said he is now a fifth-generation farmer.

“A lot of students already have an SAE of some sort, but Matthew chose to go on his own with soybeans,” Landess said. “Matthew’s was 40-percent entrepreneurship, 60-percent placement, so 60 percent of his SAE was working with his family, and the other 40 percent was his own. Typically, SAEs are more placement-related, getting an agriculturally-based job.”

His freshman year, in fall 2019, Gossett started his SAE by farming 12 acres. He started out under the supervision of his father, Ron, who owns and operates the family business, North Fork Farm (established in 1974).

“I started my SAE then by renting 12 acres of farmland,” Gossett said. “My dad helped me with getting started with buying the seed and chemicals, and then I paid him back for that. He would give me suggestions of when I should plant or when I should sell my crop, after I harvested it, but I got to plant and harvest my own crop.”

In his ensuing high school years, Gossett not only took on more acreage — up to 43 acres by the time he graduated — but he also took on a more significant workload, as he assumed the lead role in planting and harvesting the land he rented.

“Later on, I got full responsibility,” Gossett said. “The next year [as a sophomore], I got to decide what beans I wanted to plant, when to plant them and when to sell my crop by looking at the grain market, so I had full responsibility of that. Then I increased my acres to 43 that I rented, and I also got to decide what tillage practices I wanted to do. I did no-till, which helped my increase my yield over time, and putting on lime as well.”

Taking on that workload and that amount of responsibility sounds like a heavy task for a young teenager, but for Gossett, it was a natural choice, as he has worked on the farm his whole life.

“I always helped my dad, since I was real little,” Gossett said. “I rode around on tractors with my dad and grandparents. They farm, and so I decided that I wanted to farm as well. Later on, when I was able to drive a tractor, I was able to plant and harvest, so I thought, ‘This is what I want to do.’ That’s what made me decide I wanted to rent my own acres and take on the task of planting and having all the acres to do.”

In addition, Gossett has devoted countless hours to both his SAE and to farming in general over the past few years, even at his young age.

“I worked every day on the farm,” he said. “There’s always something to do — working on the equipment, after ones would use it, or preparing it for the next year, and also selling the grain throughout the month. After harvest, we store our grain in grain bins, and then we watch the markets every day, from hour to hour, to see what price we can get. Then we’ll truck it out when we contract or when we think it’s time to sell the grain.”

During the 95th Ohio FFA Convention, held in May 2023, Gossett was recognized at the state level for all of his efforts. After finding out in February that he was a state finalist, he was named the state winner in the area of Fiber and Oil Crop Production during the state convention.

Winning at state qualified him to compete at the national level in the same category. According to the National FFA Convention, for, Fiber and Oil Crop Production (Entrepreneurship/Placement), the FFA “member owns the enterprise or works for a business that includes the best management practices available to efficiently produce and market crops for fiber and/or oil such as cotton, sisal, hemp, soybeans, sesame seed, flax, mustard, canola, castor beans, sunflower, peanuts, dill, spearmint and safflower.”

In August, Gossett was named a national finalist after a review process judged by “more than 20 agricultural teachers and college professors from throughout the U.S.,” according to the National FFA Organization.

“It’s ultimately getting to know Matthew through an interview, which is really hard at the Zoom level,” Landess said. “The national interview was they put you in a Zoom room with your other competitors. You talk with them, and then the judges have to kind of figure out who you are by asking specific questions related to your application. Being able to show that you know what you’re talking about over a computer can be very challenging.”

Gossett spoke about the work he put into applying for these awards.

“First, I had an application I had to submit,” Gossett said. “I had to write what project is, what my project consists of and what I do in it. Then there’s an interview with a panel of judges, and they talk about my SAE to see what I did and what I know with that. It goes on down the line, with another interview and submitting the application again.

“It’s mainly [judged] on what you know about your project and like how much you do in it. Acreage doesn’t matter, because our family farm is 750 acres, and my acres from this year was 43. Some of the others had more acreage.”

Gossett also discussed the other top finalists in his category and what their projects entailed, as Landess said “Fiber and Oil is kind of a broad topic.

“There was someone from California that was raising cotton, and from Tennessee, that had soybeans and cotton,” Gossett said. “There was also someone from Missouri that was raising soybeans.”  

Landess explained that from the state level to the national one, judging for the projects “flips,” as the competitors go from their application having the primary focus at the state level to more of an individual, personal emphasis at the national level with the interview.

“Basically, the farther up the tier you go in the National FFA, the more it is based on the individual,” Landess said. “At the state level, back in May, the interview portion was only worth 25 percent of his overall score, and his application was worth 75 percent. When you get to the national level, they look at the application, they choose a top four, and the interview portion is worth 75 percent of your overall placing. It flips majorly. The application doesn’t mean nearly as much as what you convey in your interview.”

Then, after over four years of work farming his crop, not to mention all the time put into preparing for his award applications, Gossett found himself at the National Convention, waiting for the award announcements during the fifth session on Friday, Nov. 3. When he heard his name announced, Gossett said it “was kind of a shock and a surprise to me.”

“The unique part of it is that Matthew had no idea, until we were on stage, that he had won the award,” Landess said. “None of us knew, so you don’t find out until that moment, which is pretty cool.”

Gossett’s family members (including parents Ronnie and Lori and younger brother, Andrew) and friends (including the Lynchburg-Clay FFA chapter) were all on hand for the announcement and to celebrate with him.

“You could hear them from the stage,” Landess said. “It was pretty cool.”

As mentioned, Landess said that they believe that Gossett is not only Lynchburg-Clay’s first national award winner, but also the first FFA member in Highland County to earn such an honor.

“From what we found, Matthew made history as a national proficiency winner,” Landess said. “We’ve had a few state winners in the past, but we’ve never had a national proficiency winner.”

In addition, Landess said that she and Mowrystown FFA adviser Brian DeAtley estimated that Gossett likely defeated approximately 7,000 other students in his category to win the award.

“We figured up that there’s over 750,000 FFA members, and of those 750,000, at least 10 percent have an area of Fiber and Oil Crop Production as their SAE,” she said. “It’s huge. Huge.”

Gossett thanked his parents as well the rest of his family and FFA chapter for their support and help throughout this multi-year journey.

“I’d like to thank my parents, my grandparents, my family and my FFA adviser and the rest of the people that helped me with practice interviews,” he said. “I’d also like to thank the entire community for helping and supporting me to make this possible.”

Although Gossett thanked others, Landess said that was just a testament to his humility, because the award was the result of both his hard work and his deep knowledge of farming.

“He’s a very humble kid,” Landess said. “I’m extremely proud of Matthew. Coming from a small town, a small school, it’s difficult to get on that large stage and play with the large contenders, but we put hours into practicing interviews, into working on our application, making sure that photos in the application made sense.

“You may think that acreage matters in your area, but at the end of the day, it’s if you know what you’re doing or not, and Matthew proved that. He was very humble with how he presented himself up there.

“We need young, driven students like Matthew,” she added.

Gossett shows no signs of slowing down on the hard work that has been a hallmark of the past four years. Since graduation, he has enrolled in classes at Southern State Community College, where he intends to get his commercial driver’s license next spring. He is also continuing to work on the family farm — which he plans to someday take over — and now that he has finished high school, he has nearly doubled his acreage. He isn’t easing up there, either.

“This year, I rented 80 acres,” Gossett said. “I plan to increase to 100 for the spring.”